“Can you help me, Majesty? Please—I beg you. My husband wishes to sell the estates I have inherited from my mother, whilst I wish to run them myself. Would you rule that they should be mine alone? It would give me so much more purpose—” My voice broke.

I heard the gasp as people fell silent, some shocked, some prurient, to witness my distress. I did not care. I was looking at the Queen and at her alone, the material of her sleeve scoring my fingers because I gripped so tightly. “Majesty—” I said desperately, but I knew it was too late. The expression in her eyes had hardened into ice. I had misread her; we had little in common after all. She had given King Philip an equal share in her kingdom no matter how little he deserved it. She would not take away my husband’s right to my inheritance. She might despise him but she would not use me to revenge herself against him as I had hoped.

“Good day, Mistress Dudley,” she said, quite as though I had not spoken, and she withdrew her sleeve from my grasp with unhurried lack of concern and walked away.

It was then that I saw the ghost boy, across the heads of the crowd. I noticed him because he was standing very still in the shifting throng and he was staring directly at me. He could not have been much above sixteen years, maybe a little more or a little less. He was tall and thin as a rake, dressed like a street player or a beggar, with a short black cloak and cowl, ripped hose and muddy boots. Beneath the edge of his hood his face was pale and his eyes frightened. We stared at one another for what felt like a very long time and it seemed to me as though the flagstones tilted beneath my feet and the earth spun around me.

“Who are you?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

I doubt he heard my words for the passageway was still full of chattering courtiers. None of them seemed to have seen him, or if they had, they paid him no notice. He opened his mouth to speak. I saw his lips move and tried to listen, tried to hear his words.

Someone jostled me and did not trouble to apologise, and when I had regained my balance and looked again, the ghost boy had gone.

15

Lizzie: Present Day

“Thank you for seeing us,” Arthur said, very formally. “We’re grateful.”

“It’s the least she could do.” Anna contradicted him almost immediately. She shot Lizzie a distinctly unfriendly glance as she pushed past them both into Lizzie’s flat.

“Do come in,” Lizzie said politely. It was the morning after Johnny had disappeared and she had arranged to meet Arthur at ten. She hadn’t expected him to bring Anna with him, though. It wrong-footed her and she was angry for reading more intimacy into their interactions than existed, and for assuming Arthur would come alone. In the dark reaches of the night, lying awake for hour after hour, it had comforted her to think there was some sort of bond between them. Now in cold daylight she realised that she had been naïve. Johnny had never arrived home the previous night. Arthur wanted to find him. She was the last person who had seen him so she might be able to help. That was all there was to it.